Tag Archives: Junior mining stocks

The simple answer to that question is: who knows, eventually it will. I like to look at the Commitment of Traders report for signals. I think the COT offers better information than looking at charts, although I like to use my COT analysis in conjunction with charts. My fund partner keeps a database of COT gold and silver data going back to May 2005. Over this time, there’s been a strong correlation between the direction of gold, the net long position of the hedge funds, the net short position of the banks and the total open interest in gold (silver) futures.

Over this time period (Since May 2005), the total open interest in Comex gold futures has averaged 429k contracts. The hedge fund net long position in gold futures has averaged 142.8k and the bank net short position has averaged 168.1k contracts. Since 2015, we’ve had two price cycles starting with the low in December 2015. At the December 2015 low in gold, the hedge fund net long position was 9,750k contracts and the bank net short was 2.9k contracts. The December hedge fund net long was an extraordinary low net long position and the bank net short was extraordinarily low. This makes sense given that mid-December marked the bottom of the nearly 6-year bear cycle within the secular gold bull market.

If we go back July 2016, the open interest in Comex gold has declined 206k contracts – a staggering 26 million ozs – 737 tonnes (25% worth of gold produced annually). The Comex banks were short an eye-popping 340k contracts – 34 million ounces, or 964 tonnes of paper gold. This represents an undeniably enormous effort by the Fed via the Comex banks to cap the price of gold.

As of the last COT report (Dec 12th, the hedge fund net long was 107k and the bank net short was 119k. The overall open interest was 446k, about 20k contracts above the average open interest since May 2005. In a “horsehoes and handgrenades” context, we should have seen the bottom a week ago.

The open interest report thru Tuesday (Dec 19th) showed 446k open interest. Assuming most of that drop in o/i was decline in the hedge fund net long and bank net short, we should start to head higher, but don’t expect this happen continuously, in parabolic crypto-coin fashion. The gold bubble is yet to occur. I can’t promise that gold will move higher from here. The best we can do is assess probabilities based on historical data relationships as they apply currently.

I want to mention briefly that Dennis Gartman has exited the long position in gold in his theoretical portfolio. Gartman’s market calls have a spectacular track record as a reliable contrarian indicator. I kid you not. This would suggest that the gold market is at or near a bottom.

Back in the September, I advised my Mining Stock Journalsubscribers that I suspected the coming sell-off in gold – manipulated sell-off, of course – would take gold down to mid-$1240 area. It hit $1241 on December 12th. Sometimes the coin does indeed land on “heads” when I call “heads.” I also discussed the hedge we were implementing on our mining stock portfolio and provided details on the my opinion of best way for subscribers to hedge a junior portfolio. The hedge easily saved us at least 7% (700 basis points) of performance this quarter.

The stock I presented in the last issue (Dec 14th) is up 12% and it’s still highly undervalued, especially given that it will start producing in late 2018. You can learn more about this stock and subscription details using this link: Mining Stock Journal.

As students of the gold market know, the paper gold markets in New York and London function as price manipulation mechanisms used by the western Central Banks in their effort to control the price of gold. As the physical demand from the eastern hemisphere pushes the price higher, the operators of the LBMA and Comex print large quantities of paper gold (gold futures, forwards) in order to satisfy the demand of hedge funds, which use futures to chase price momentum (up and down) in gold and silver.

Gold had been trading in a sideways pattern since mid-September between $1320 and $1260:

The graph above is derived from the Comex “continuous contract” end of day price. The continuous contract is not an actual contract. It is rather a price measure that “splices together” the front-month contracts over time for charting purposes.

As you can see, gold has formed a nice uptrend from late December 2016 that seems to have “stalled” since mid-September. I watch the Comex gold futures open interest level and the COT “structure,” where COT structure is the big bank net short position vs the hedge fund net long position, in order to form an opinion on where I think the price of gold is headed. When the open interest in gold futures is at an extreme high level, combined with a bank net short position that is also extremely high, it almost always implies a price-takedown is coming.

Since mid-September, however, the gold futures open interest has stubbornly persisted above 500,000 contracts until the last week. Similarly, the big bank net short and the hedge fund net long positions have persisted at extremes over this time period. This is because, contrary to the “fake news” anti-gold propaganda spewing from U.S. financial media (Bloomberg and reuters specifically), physical “consumption” in the eastern hemisphere (India, China, Russia, Turkey, etc) has been unexpectedly strong. Evidence of this is in direct data that comes from these countries and from the unusually high level of Privately Negotiated and Exchange For Physical transactions occurring on the Comex and the LBMA. These are “off exchange” contract settlement transactions that are intentionally opaque in nature.

Historically, extremes in these metrics tend to correct in much less time than the current period. We have maintained a hedge on our mining stock portfolio for about 80% of the time between mid-September and now. We pulled it off about two weeks ago on a Friday thinking that maybe the ability of the banks to slam the market had diminished this time because of the strong physical demand from the east. Literally about 30 minutes after we took off the hedge the price of gold was slammed (I’m not kidding).

My thinking has been that, if we abide strictly by the COT and open interest, the Comex o/i needs to decline to the low 400k area before the next move higher takes place. When I “eyeballed” the gold chart in early September in the context of historical price-takedown operations, I figured it would take a move down to the $1230-1240 area to wash out enough open interest to rebalance the net short/net long set-up. But the open interest has persisted above 500k and the attacks on the gold price during the paper trading Comex hours have been short-lived in duration and shallow relative to historical intra-day attacks. The banks couldn’t seem to get gold below $1260-$1270 until this week.

My best guess is that the unusually high demand for physical gold from the eastern hemisphere has prevented the banks from taking the price down enough to trigger one last hedge fund open interest wash-out. The 34,896 contract plunge in gold futures open interest last Tuesday (November 28) was the third largest one-day decline in o/i since the beginning of 2011 and it is a move in the right direction in order to break the “log-jam” in open interest on the Comex.

That said, the eastern hemisphere will go into temporary hibernation in mid to late December thru early January. I suspect that one last “shock and awe” price attack orchestrated in the paper market will be attempted in order to get the open interest down into the low 400k area. I thus expect the bull trend in gold/silver will resume in mid-January. We put the hedge back on this week, though we’ve been trying to trade in and out of it on price swings. In all likelihood, unless I see something that suggests otherwise, we’ll likely go through the Christmas/New Year’s period with a hedge.

One last thought, it’s going to be interesting to watch the Bitcoin bulls squirm and panic when the CME banks wrap their tentacles around Bitcoin futures. Contrary to the untested notion that the supply of Bitcoin is capped, the supply of paper Bitcoin (futures contracts) is theoretically infinite…

The commentary above is from IRD’s Mining Stock Journal, which focuses on undiscovered gold and silver junior exploration stock ideas as well as presents relative value trading ideas in mid-cap mining stocks. You learn more about this newsletter here: Mining Stock Journal Information.

I wanted to thank you again for explaining to me how you put a hedge on it has saved me a great deal of money – subscriber feedback received this morning

The stock market rejoices the House passage of the tax “reform” Bill as the Dow shot up 187 points and the S&P 500 spiked up 21. The Nasdaq soared 1.3%, retracing its 3-day decline in one day. The tax bill is nothing more than a massive redirect of money flow from the Treasury Department to Corporate America and billionaires. The middle class will not receive any tax relief from the Bill but it will shoulder the burden of the several trillion dollars extra in Treasury debt that will be required to finance the tax cuts for the wealthy. The tax “reform” will have, at best, no effect on GDP. It will likely be detrimental to real economic output.

The Big Money Grab is “on” at the highest levels of of Wall St., DC, Corporate America, the Judiciary and State/local Govt. These people are grabbing from a dying carcass as fast and greedily as possible. The elitists are operating free from any fear of the Rule of Law. That particular nuisance does not apply to “them” – only to “us.” They don’t even try to hide their grand scale theft anymore because the protocol in place to prevent them from doing this is now on their side. This is the section in Atlas Shrugged leading up to the big implosion.

“When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed.” – Atlas Shrugged

Speaking of the economy, as with inflation the GDP report does not reflect the true level of real economic activity in the U.S. because the Government report is not designed to measure real economic output. Instead, the GDP is yet another Government economic report constructed with blatant statistical manipulation and outright fraudulent data sampling. How am I so certain of this? The “tell” on the true condition of the economy lies with the fact that Fed is “normalizing” neither interest rates nor its balance sheet. In fact, if the Fed were to “normalize” monetary policy, it would quickly hike the Fed funds rate up closer to 6% and it would be reducing its balance sheet and removing at least the $2.1 trillion in printed cash sitting in the banks’ excess reserve account. The problem is that this “normalization” would pop the enormous asset bubble created from money printing. It would also interrupt the ongoing wealth confiscation.

Elijah Johnson at Silver Doctors invited to discuss the above issues as well as the stock, bond and housing bubbles. And of course gold and mining stocks:

I’ll be releasing the latest issue of my Mining Stock Journal this evening. It will have an emerging junior gold exploration company that has been described at “Gold Standard Ventures 2.0.” You can find out more information here: Mining Stock Journal info.

In the July 27th issue of the Mining Stock Journal, I discussed briefly the run-up in Novo Resources‘ stock (NSRPF, NVO.V). At that point the stock, which had gone parabolic, was trading at US$1.93 for a $225 million market-cap. In defiance of any type of fundamental valuation logic, Novo continued straight up, high-ticking at $4.71. Currently as I write this, the stock is trading at $3.26. At $4/share on a fully diluted basis (the warrants and options are currently well in the money) the stock sports a $656 million market cap. This is absolute insanity for a company which does not have any proved resource beyond 495,000 of indicated/inferred resource at a project (Beatons Creek) not related to the news flow from the project (Karratha) that is driving the run-up in the stock. Investors are throwing money into this stock with little to no understanding of the meaning behind the contents of the news being released. (Click in image to enlarge):

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Novo is not for real. It very well could be. What I’m stressing is that very little is known about what Novo may or may not have at Karratha based on the information that has been gathered by the Company and released to the public. Just like the pretty pictures of beautiful gold nuggets from outcroppings at Karratha that Novo has put in its corporate presentation, I can show you pictures given to me from the management at Eurasian Minerals from its Koonenberry project in Australia of beautiful gold nuggets collected from “coarse gold” samples. That was eight years ago and the project has not been advanced from that time.

In general, it is unlikely that anything above an inferred mineral resource can be estimated from surface sampling and assaying that has been on Karratha’s coarse gold environment. While coarse gold can be indicative of a high-grade gold-bearing system beneath the surface, the presence of very high grade nuggets of coarse gold do not guarantee it. Economic grades of gold are generally contained within discrete ore shoots and are surrounded by low-grade material. The presence of coarse gold can complicate the exploration process.

I exchanged emails with a senior officer at another mining company with an Australian presence to see if he had any knowledge or thoughts on Novo’s situation. He said that Quinton Hennigh (Chairman) “has a real nose for this stuff.” But, as I have suggested above, he admitted that only underground drilling (much deeper than the couple of bulk samples produced from trenching) will tell us where the real source of the gold is, assuming it’s there to be found.

This is a project that will take years to explore and assess. I’m guesstimating at this point the project would be 8-10 years away from transitioning into a commissioned mining operation. Between now and then there’s is a substantial amount of expensive exploration and de-risking that needs to occur. Again, the presence of high-grade course gold-bearing nuggets does not guarantee that an economically mineable resource exists below the surface.

I’m not trying to discourage anyone from taking a shot at Novo. But the odds that it’s the next large deposit discovered (in excess of 10 million ozs) is small. My view is that this would be a great risk/return proposition if the stock were still under a $30-50 million market cap. For my risky investment allocation, I think Precipitate or Mineral Mountain represent better risk/return speculative bets than Novo at a $600 million market cap.

NOTE – Subsequent Event: It was announced on September 5th that Kirkland Lake (KIRK, KL.TO, market cap of US$3.4 billion) would be investing up to $56 million for up 7.7% of Novo’s stock in a private placement. While this is a positive event in terms of providing the Company with additional funds for drilling, we still need to see drill results – and a lot of drill results. This does not change my overall view that the stock price has run ahead of itself given what is known about the potential mineralization on the project. I would sell into the move higher today and wait for the stock to pullback to a lower level before taking a longer term position in the Company’s stock.

The stock closed at US$3.26 today (Thursday). In the last issue of the Mining stock Journal I recommended selling it at US$3.76. The stock is down 25.4% from its high-close (US$4.33) and 30.7% from its all-time high trade ($4.71). I’m not recommending avoiding the stock at all. This could be a very interesting speculative play. But it’s a function of the cost to invest. At $600 million, I will let others bear the exploration risk. If the stock were to pullback below $2 – and it might not – I will probably talk to my partners about putting some in the fund. I think the $1.40 area is a good entry point but it may never trade that low again.

If you want to learn more about Precipitate Gold or Mineral Mountain, or several other promising junior exploration companies, please follow this link for information about subscription newsletter:Mining Stock Journal

I found it amusing that Mohamed El-Erian wrote an opinion piece for Bloomberg which asserted that gold is not much of a “safe haven these days.” His thesis was entirely devoid of material facts. His underlying rationale was that safe haven capital was flowing into cryptocurrencies rather than gold. I guess if one has a western-centric view of the markets, that argument is a modicum of validity. However the scope of the analysis omits that fact that the entire eastern hemisphere is converting fiat currency at a record pace into physical gold that requires bona fide delivery outside of western custodial roach motels.

Elijah Johnson invited me onto his podcast sponsored by Silver Doctors to discuss why the financial upheaval beginning to engulf the United States will be much worse than the 2008 “Big Short” crisis. We also discussed by the precious market has always been and will continue be the best place to seek shelter from coming financial hurricane:

If you are looking for ways to take advantage of the next move higher in the precious metals bull market, you can find out more information about the Mining Stock Journal using this link: Mining Stock Journal subscription information.

I had not noticed until I looked mid-day today (Thursday, Aug 24th) and saw that the HUI index was above 200. It ended up closing just above 200. I want to see it hold above 200 dma and move higher from there before I get excited. But the chart has become mildly bullish. GDX, which is a larger representation of the large-cap mining stocks, looks even more bullish that the HUI:

I’m not big advocate of using chart “technicals” to forecast the next move in any market, but many traders, hedge funds and investors use them and they can become “self-fulfilling prophecies.” You can see that GDX (same with HUI and GDXJ) has been trending sideways since early February in a pattern of rrowing volatility. Chartists look at this as a pattern that predicts a big move in either direction. I’ve drawn in a white downtrend line through which the GDX appears to have climbed over. It’s also now above its 50/200 dma’s (yellow and red lines, respectively). I’m not ready to declare a “break-out” yet, but I’m feeling optimistic going into the eastern hemisphere’s biggest seasonal period for accumulating physical gold:

The gold chart above is a 2-yr daily for the price of gold as represented by the Comex continuous gold futures contract. Since April the price has been hitting its head on $1300. I remember when gold attempted to break above $400 in late 2003/early 2004. It took several attempts to get up and over $400. Around that time Robert Prechter had predicted that gold would drop to $50. How well did Prechter’s charts work then?

There’s one of many catalysts away from sheer eastern physical demand or an errant tweet
from Trump that can push gold a lot higher in conjunction with the U.S. dollar index quickly falling a lot lower. The most pressing issues currently are the rising geopolitical tensions between Russia/China and the U.S., the upcoming Treasury debt-ceiling battle and, what is becoming more apparent by the day, a deteriorating U.S. economic and financial system.

Speaking of physical demand, extremely negative ex-duty import premiums have been
observed in India. Many of you may have read standard gold-bashing propaganda pointing to that as evidence that India’s new sales tax is affecting gold demand. But quite the contrary is true. As it turns out, there was a loop-hole in the Goods and Services Tax legislation that scrapped a 10% excise duty on imports from countries with which India had signed a Free Trade Agreement. Currently Indian gold importers appear to be sourcing gold from South Korea, which enables buyers to avoid the 10% import duty entirely. Until the Indian authorities move to close this loophole, we won’t have good feel for how much gold is flowing into India until the official monthly statistics are released. Based on the import trend in June and July, there continues to be an usually large amount of gold imported into India this summer. It will likely pick up even more as we head into the India festival season this fall.

The above commentary is from the latest issue of the Mining Stock Journal. For those of you with huge profit in Novo Resources, I provide some information about Novo that is not in the analyst reports. It includes some technical information about the nature of the assay results produced up to this point. The issue contains analysis in support of buying two primary silver producers whose stocks have been sold off well below their intrinsic values. New subscribers get all of the back-issues. You can find out more about the MSJ here: Mining Stock Journal information.

While I will maintain, until proven wrong by the test of time, that Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies are nothing more than a temporary fad, investing with a long term outlook (20-30 years) gives the investor the best probability of generating life-style changing wealth.

William Powers, of MiningStockEducation.com, invited onto his podcast to discuss using leverage in precious metals and mining stock investing. We discuss greed/fear, using margin with mining stocks, volatility, options, futures and the leveraged ETFs.

The problem for most investors, and the reason many have not made a lot of money – or might have lost money – in the precious metals sector is the inability to invest with a long term perspective. Since 2001, gold has outperformed every asset class. The mining stocks, in general as measured using the HUI index, have outperformed the Dow/Naz since 2001.

If your reason to be invested in a sector is still valid, there’s no reason to sell investments in that sector. Have the reasons for investing precious metals as a hedge against a collapsing U.S. economic and political system, and thereby a collapse in the U.S. dollar, changed? Have the problems taking the U.S. down been fixed? The answer is pretty obvious, which means you should be holding your precious metals investments, even if you bought them in early 2011. In fact, if you bought then, you should be buying more now. I know I have been adding to my holdings gradually since early 2016.

The next issue of the Mining Stock Journal will be published this Thursday. I’ll be reviewing a junior stock that has gone parabolic and a mid-cap producer that has been hammered hard but is poised to bounce back just as sharply. You can learn more about the MSJ here – new subscribers get all of the back-issues: Mining Stock Journal information.

First this, but don’t take our word for it:The US Dollar is under considerable pressure. Week after week, we talk about how the dollar has been going down for the count. It can only take so many hits. Gold and silver are the safe haven assets to own through a currency crisis, and for the moment, the precious metals have been on the clearance sale rack since July. At what point do the dollar bulls capitulate? It has been years since the dollar has come under pressure, and the frequency in which everybody is a genius yet bouncing from job to job, including in the financial sector, there are now so few analysts/financial advisers/traders who have seen a bear market, that one wonders if anybody will hear it when it roars?

The pressure is building. Just look at copper and ask these questions:

Is mining supply down for everything, or just copper?

How is copper rallying, yet silver price action has found everything except for a bid?

If copper finished the quarter with 2nd place overall gains, across all asset classes, second only to crude, then why are the precious metals so far behind?

Here’s a closer look at copper action of late:

The consolidation is impressive, spanning several months. With the recent 7% gains in just the month of July, is copper set for another leg up, or will it come crashing down to the weakness of gold and silver? Gold prices have been trading in a $20 range since last week. Seriously. To the penny. At a price of approximately $1275 going into Friday’s trading action, gold looks ready to either break-out or break-down:

Earlier this week,we reported that mining sector 2nd quarter earnings have now hit full stride. Second quarter earnings from the miners have been mixed. Gold miners seem to be weathering the storm, but silver miners not so much:

GOLD

CONSENSUS EPS

ACTUAL

RESULT

Barrick (ABX)

$0.2

$0.22

BEAT

Rand Gold (GOLD)

$0.74

$0.88

BEAT

SILVER

CONSENSUS EPS

ACTUAL

RESULT

Endeavour (EXK)

$0.02

$0.00

MISS

First Majestic (AG)

$0.05

$-0.02

MISS

The performance of the miners begs a the question:

Are the silver miners no longer able to compete, or is silver under-priced when compared to current market conditions?

On the fundamental front, we have several issues to be concerned with. ADP Payroll data suggests poor labor market conditions. According to the most recent report, the manufacturing sector shed 4,000 jobs in July, 2017. Today is the official Bureau of Lies and Statistics BLS Nonfarm Payrolls report, and as we are now over half a year into 2017, this employment data is perhaps the most important release ever. We shall not reiterate what a disaster the rest of the economy has become. The “Stock Market” is at record highs, though the barrage of incoming data paints the picture of a seriously sick economy, and it is perhaps terminal.

SilverDoctors.com has been on the leading edge of Gold News and Silver News Since 2011. Each month, more than 250,000 investors visit SilverDoctors.com to gain insights on Precious Metals News as well as to stay up-to-date on World News impacting the metals markets.

Doc asked me last minute to fill-in for Eric Dubin, who’s M.I.A. somewhere on the shoreline of southern France, on Silver Doctor’s Metals and Markets weekly podcast. Among other topics we discussed why the current trading action in the precious metals paper market feels very similar to trading in the spring/summer of 2008 – ahead of the great financial collapse crisis and why the Fed/bullion banks are making it obvious that they seek to scare investors away from buying precious metals with their “shock and awe” price-takedowns.

But one big difference between now and 2008 is that these “zip-line” vertical drops in the paper are being met with aggressive buying from the eastern hemisphere physical buyers, thereby limiting the size, intensity and duration of the price-hits.

As of the latest COT report release Friday which details the constituent trader positions through last Tuesday, the trader positions are moving toward a highly bullish set-up for gold and silver. In silver, the hedge funds are now net short silver futures and the swap-dealer segment of the bullion bank positioning is net long. In gold, the hedge funds have aggressively reduced their net long position and the swap dealers are long to a relatively large degree. Historically, this position shift has preceded major bottoms.

In the latest Mining Stock Journal, I present a silver producer who’s stock that was ruthlessly taken recently. I review the details in-depth, including my conversation with the CEO, and discuss why this is an opportunity to buy into a major producing company at irrationally low price level based on the facts of the situation. I also lay-out the call options I put into the fund I manage in large quantities to bet that my assessment has good probability of being correct. You can find out more about subscribing here: Mining Stock Journal info.

After subscribing to Brent Cook for 3 months, I was underwhelmed. Resubscribed to you a few weeks back and sure am glad I did so. You are one the few straight shooters still out there. Keep up the great work. I think we are right on the cusp of a serious market break, thus the war drums. – subscriber “Chris

As reported on Bloomberg TV: “Barrick Gold Corp was back in favor with fund managers last quarter, before the world’s biggest bullion producer reported disappointing earnings and rising costs…Billionaire investor Stan Druckenmiller’s Duquense Family Office LLC bought 2.85 million shares in Barrick” in the 1st quarter.

Apparently Templeton and Druckenmiller have not done their home work on mining stocks. Anyone with any knowledge and experience investing in mining stocks knows that companies like Barrick and Goldcorp and are poorly managed, highly bureaucratic organizations. As such, they are terrible vehicles with which to express a leveraged view on the precious metals market.

Barrick has all kinds of problems that will affect its profitability, including a pile-on of class action lawsuits that hit recently. Anyone with experience in this sector already knows this. Rather than investing in the largest mining stocks, the best returns in the sector will be made by investing in the companies that will be acquired by these large caps. A good example is the recent takeover of Exeter Resources (XRA) by Goldcorp:

If Stanley Druckenmiller had been a subscriber to the Mining Stock Journal, he would have known to buy XRA in early September (presented in the Sept 1, 2016 issue) at $1.16. The stock popped up to $1.80 when XRA and GG announced the merger. That’s a 55% ROR in 7 months. MSJ subscribers were also shown Mariana Resources in the December 22, 2016 issue at 82 cents. Mariana agreed to acquired by Sandstorm Gold in a deal valued at $1.41. Because of the heavy stock component, SAND traded lower and Mariana traded up to $1.24. A 51% ROR in four months. The new stock idea presented in mid-April is up 19% and has a lot more room to run.

The Mining Stock Journal is a bi-weekly subscription publication that is designed to help you navigate the smaller-cap mining stocks. You can learn more about the subscription service here: Mining Stock Journal information.

After subscribing to Brent Cook for 3 months, I was underwhelmed. Resubscribed to you a few weeks back and sure am glad I did so. You are one the few straight shooters still out there. Keep up the great work. I think we are right on the cusp of a serious market break, thus the war drums. – subscriber “Chris”